Birds

The Birds (The Birds) is a 1963 American horror thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is based on a 1952 short novel of the same name based on horror stories, and written by Daphne du Maurier. The film featured performances by Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, and Veronica Cartwright.

In 1994, Universal Pictures released a sequel titled: The Birds 2: The End of the World, with the special performance of Hedren and which received negative reviews; In 2016, The Birds was deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Synopsis

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is the spoiled daughter of a San Francisco newspaper mogul. One Friday she goes looking for a bird at a pet store on behalf of an aunt of hers. Her dependent, Mrs. MacGruder (Ruth McDevitt & # 39;), is absent for a moment, leaving Melanie alone.

While Melanie waits, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), a successful attorney with whom she falls in love at first sight, walks into the store. Mitch is looking for a pair of Lovebirds parrots that he plans to give to her sister for her birthday, and he goes to Melanie, taking her for the store clerk. Melanie plays along, until Mitch tells her that he had recognized her, since Melanie had been a defendant in a lawsuit some time ago, and had decided to play a prank on him. She returns to the shop assistant and, when asked by Mitch about her parrots, she replies that she can't give them to him right away, but that she will have to wait until the next day. Mitch leaves, and before leaving, Melanie takes note of his license plates; she then calls her father's newspaper and asks one of her employees to find out Mitch's full name and address.

The next day, Melanie goes to Mitch's apartment with a couple of parrots in a cage, to give him a pleasant surprise. A neighbor tells him that Mitch is not going to spend the weekend there, but in Bodega Bay. Determined to see Mitch, Melanie sets off for Bodega Bay in her luxury convertible, dressed in an expensive fur coat and carrying the cage with the parrots.

Upon reaching the coast, he heads to the post office to find out the address of the Brenner family. The clerk (John McGovern) tells him that the house is on the other side of the bay, and that the only way to get there is by a road that runs along the coast; But Melanie says that she prefers to surprise the family, so the clerk suggests that she rent a boat with an outboard motor to get there. Melanie asks for the name of Mitch's sister, and the employee tells her that her name is Alice or Lois, but to be more sure, he recommends that she go to the house of the town teacher: Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette).

Melanie arrives at the teacher's house, where no one seems to be around. In a window there is a small sign announcing the rent of a room. Melanie is preparing to leave the place, when Annie appears, a young woman the same age as her. They both introduce themselves and Melanie asks for the Brenner girl's name, which turns out to be Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). Annie offers Melanie a cigarette, and curious, she asks if she knows Mitch. Melanie realizes that there was a romantic relationship between Mitch and Annie, and says that she brings a birthday present for Cathy.

Back in Bodega Bay, Melanie parks her car and heads to the dock to board the motor boat she's rented. A fisherman (Doodles Weaver) helps him down from the dock to the boat, and puzzled by Melanie's grace and the cage she carries in that gloved hand, she asks if she knows how to drive a boat. She tells him yes, and part of it without problems.

As she approaches the Brenner family home, Melanie turns off the engine when she spots Mitch heading to a nearby garage. She then begins rowing to the dock, planning to surreptitiously leave the cage inside the house and return to Bodega Bay unseen. She makes it and goes back to the boat, drifts a little ways away, and crouches waiting to see the effect of her joke. Mitch returns to the house, and after a few minutes, he hurries out and looks for the mysterious visitor. Melanie laughs at her own joke and rides away from her in the boat. Mitch sees her from afar, goes to look for some cufflinks and, looking with them, sees Melanie. so he gets in her car and goes to meet her at Bodega Bay.

Back at the pier, Melanie awaits Mitch's arrival, when a seagull unexpectedly attacks her, wounding her on the forehead, leaving her bleeding and shocked. Rushing to her aid, Mitch takes her to a nearby restaurant, where her owners, Deke Carter (Lonny Chapman) and her wife Helen (Elizabeth Wilson), give him cotton wool and disinfectant for her wound.

Melanie is invited to Brenner's sister's birthday party, but has to deal with the suspicions of Brenner's mother, Lydia, who sees Melanie as a usurper of her son's company.

During the birthday party, which is being held outdoors, Melanie bonds with Brenner; but a group of seagulls breaks in and attacks the children.

From then on, the behavior of the birds becomes increasingly bizarre until it reaches the point where Bodega Bay is engulfed in chaos with explosions and attacks by local birds. Melanie, Mitch, Cathy, and Mitch's mother lock themselves inside the Brenner family home where they are again attacked. It takes a long time until Melanie hears various noises coming from the attic, when she enters and shines a lantern, she sees the broken ceiling and several crows on an old bed, the birds attack her but Mitch takes her out of the attic and they block the door.

Melanie is in shock and Mitch decides to drive her to the hospital outside of Bodega Bay with her car. Mitch leaves the house and manages to make it to the garage despite taking a few pecks on the legs, without serious consequences, driving Melanie's car closer to the driveway. Then everyone gets in the car and Cathy asks Mitch if she can bring the lovebirds Melanie gave her. Finally, the movie ends with the car slowly moving across what looks like a ground covered in birds.

Cast

Comments

Tippi Hedren in a picture of the film trailer.

• Bodega Bay is a place near Santa Rosa on the coast of California.
• Hitchcock eliminates incidental music in the development of the film to experiment with the periods of silence.
• Hitchcock hires Ray Berwick and Ub Iwerks for the modeling of birds, combining trained birds and machined birds to give realism to the film.
• The scene where Tippi Hedren is attacked by a seagull could not be more realistic. Although the seagull was not authentic, but a doll thrown into the actress by wires, the impact caused him a wound on the forehead. The shoot stopped three days while Tippi recovered.
• Hitchcock thought of Grace Kelly for Melanie's role, but relationships had cooled. She chose to see the elegant and stylized figure of a beautiful blonde named Tippi Hedren when she saw an advertising of dietary products called Sego Hedren walks down the street and is pyrope by a boy. The same situation is reproduced at the beginning of the film.
• "Tippi" is an affectionate abbreviation of the Swedish word "typsa", which means "small girl". The real name of the actress is Nathalie Hedren.
• Hitchcock deliberately omitted any rational explanation to the behavior of birds. He knew that it created much greater concern among the spectators, its end was one: to infuse fear, chaos and universally helpless. He also suppressed the classic "The End" of the end, to make the public's mess go on even after the film was finished.
• A script developed by Evan Hunter exhibited a more romantic and elaborate courtship between Brenner and Daniels, as well the devastation of the birds was more extensive and dramatic about the people and their inhabitants; but the script was remade by Hitchcock limiting the courtship to only an intimate conversation of mutual affective deficiencies and eliminating the previous romantic approach of the protagonistic couple (it was limited but not included).
• At first, the adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's original story was planned for the 1950s TV show, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", but the script was so good that Hitchcock decided to turn it into a feature film.
• The original end of Hitchcock contemplated the protagonists, who ended up escaping from the birds, arriving in San Francisco relieved, until they realized that there were birds planted all over the Golden Gate Bridge and the buildings. Because of the lack of monetary and technological resources, it was not possible. (Cinemania)
• In 1994 a second part of the birds The Birds II: Land's End (TV) was made (Birds 2: The End of the World (TV))

Cameo

• The classic Hitchcock cameo appears at the very beginning of the film, leaving the pet store with two white peel dogs while Tippi enters the same store.

The basic real fact

As already mentioned, the film is based on the 1952 short novel of the same name, written by Daphne du Maurier.

A real event, which occurred on August 28, 1961, brought to Hitchcock's memory the famous tale by du Maurier and encouraged his desire to make the film. The local newspaper Santa Cruz Sentinel (California), in Monterey Bay, published a story that said the following:

On three o'clock in the morning, a rain of birds rushed over the roofs of the houses waking up the population that, frightened by the offensive of the seagulls, ran out of their homes and stood up with improvised torches of fire. In the morning, the inhabitants of the city found the streets covered by the bodies of the animals. The birds, who threw up pieces of fish - their own food - fired an unbearable and pestilenced stench.

Structural formula of domoic acid.

The news reached Hitchcock, since he had a ranch in the area, and he came to him when he was preparing the adaptation of the novel.

In 2011, after years of research, marine biologists from the University of Louisiana discovered that it could have been caused by bird poisoning from eating an algae that is abundant in that area and contains a poison. The toxin found, which is domoic acid, directly damages the nervous system.

In the United States there was a case of bird attack; It happened to the Westminster family. Birds, apparently in numbers and groups ranging from 100 to 300, mercilessly attacked this family of 4, with none surviving the incident. The birds did not appear to attack to feed: their behavior is presumed to have been due to domoic acid poisoning.

Awards and nominations

Golden Globe Award 1964:

• To the most promising actress (Tippi Hedren).

DVD Exclusive Awards 2001:

• the best retrospective documentary (All About The Birds) by Laurent Bouzereau, 2000).

Candidacies

Oscar Award 1964:

• For the best visual effects (Ub Iwerks).

Edgar Award 1964:

• To the best movie (Evan Hunter).

Satellite Award 2005:

• The most outstanding DVD of classics (Alfred Hitchcock - The Masterpiece Collection).

'The Birds' Are Back

The BBC is preparing a new adaptation of the famous Alfred Hitchcock film

British state television BBC is preparing a 'remake' of one of the icons of cinema, 'The birds', by Alfred Hitchcock. The plot thus returns to the island where it was born, since the script for the mythical film is based on the novel of the same name -and based on real events- by the English writer Daphne du Maurier. The terrifying birds will migrate from California to the Cornish countryside, in the south of England, according to the specialized media 'Den of geek', to the time that they will also do it from the big screen to the small one. According to information from the same medium, the BBC project consists of readapting one of Hitchcock's masterpieces into a television series, although being more faithful to the novel than to the film.

The script for this new BBC series will be written by Irishman Conor McPherson, a writer and screenwriter who already adapted Du Maurier's novel for the theater in 2009. McPherson has also participated as a director and screenwriter in films such as "The Eclipse" and 'The Actors'. On the other hand, the production will be in charge of 'Heyday Television', in which David Heyman ('Harry Potter', 'Gravity') is a participant, and & #39;NBC Universal International Studios.

The BBC thus faces a challenge that others have given up in the past. In 2014, several British media echoed the intention of the American director and producer Michael Bay to carry out a 'remake' of the film. for the big screen of 'The Birds'. Although in its day there was even a planned protagonist (Naomi Watts) in the role that the actress Tippi Hedren played in the Hitchcock film, the project never came to fruition.

The Birds II

• Birds 2: The End of the World (TV) (1994)